Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley - 'The richest portrait of Presley we have ever had' Sunday Telegraph

Product Information

He was a man who thought and acted like a boy. Always craving an entourage that never left him, none of the people who surrounded him could help his addiction to a plethora of drugs. His autopsy showed an enlarged heart, liver damage as well as a painful bowel condition caused by excess drug usage. At the time of his death, at least 14 different drugs were in his body. The amount of codeine was ten times a normally prescribed level. His addiction to quaaludes brought toxic levels to a body that over abused drugs for many years. Silence is the resting place of the soul. It's sacred. And necessary for new thoughts to be born. That's what my pills are for...to get as close as possible to that silence." - p. 456

He surrounded himself with predatory types, buying the love and allegiance of friends, family, and strangers alike with spur-of-the-moment gifts: sports cars, luxury cars, jewelry, homes and even -at one stage- horses. Almost every friend he ever had was more than happy to prey on Elvis's largesse. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture.And Elvis himself? A complicated mix of guilessness and sweet innocence, with something more ambitious and single-minded, entangled with a charisma and natural blazing talent underpinned by a genuine spirituality. The image of him ringing his parents every night from hysterical tours and Hollywood film sets, of bringing home Natalie Wood to stay with his mum and dad, of buying them Graceland to compensate for the single room and shared housing he grew up in is a testament to real feeling. Written with grace, humor, and affection, Last Train to Memphis has been hailed as the definitive biography of Elvis Presley. It is the first to set aside the myths and focus on Elvis' humanity in a way that has yet to be duplicated. This book is brutally honest about Elvis's countless personal faults, including his sense of making love being nothing more than a kind of infantilism.

Elvis set some all-time records for celebrity, audacity and exuberance. He helped the world break out of a great number of out-of-date constraints and begin new epochs in popular music and style. He spread a joyous sort of Americaness to the rest of the world. For those things he will be remembered, forever, with love and happiness.This was a great book but the story was difficult to read. Elvis seemed so alone after his mother died and just made horrible, truly odd choices when he wasn't reaching some impressive heights in his career. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley is the first biography to go past that myth and present an Elvis beyond the legend. Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, it traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait of Elvis and his world. Especially towards the last half of the book, several of Elvis's "girlfriends" complain of his almost sex-less love making.